Reinventing the Universe

Reinventing the Universe

A new astronomy for the new millennium

By Jerrold Thacker

Copyright 2012 by Jerrold G. Thacker

JThacker@msn.com

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Section I – The Expanding Universe and the Big Bang

Chapter 1 – Redshifted Galaxies – the Dawn of Modern Astronomy

Chapter 2 – A New Explanation for the Redshift of Galaxies

Section II- Strange Things They Would Have Us Believe

Chapter 3- The Mysterious Quasars

Chapter 4- The Missing Matter in the Universe

Chapter 5 – The Cosmic Background Radiation

Section III – New Explanations for Just About Everything

Chapter 6 – Gravitational Lenses

Chapter 7 – Gravitation Effects and Collapsed Stars

Chapter 8 – A New Look at Gravity

Chapter 9 – Quasars – A New Kind of Star?

Chapter 10 – New Thoughts about Pulsars

Chapter 11- The Sun as a Pulsar

Chapter 12- Galaxies and Star Clusters – are they real?

Chapter 13 – Some Answers to the Missing Mass Problem

Chapter 14 – Shrinking the Universe, or Where Have All the Stars Gone?

Chapter 15 – Gravity’s Effect on the Formation of the Solar System

Chapter 16 - Summary

Preface

This is not your ordinary book on astronomy. In this book we’re going to take a new look at just about everything today’s astronomers believe, and arrive at some new answers that will surprise and amaze you. And along the way we will find new answers to many of the puzzles that face astronomers today. This book is about astronomy from an entirely new perspective.

Let’s clear something up right at the outset. I am not a professional astronomer. My background is in math and physics, so I understand the stuff, but I have not worked in the field. But lest you think this book is just something an amateur dreamed up, let me assure you it has been extremely well researched. I have spent countless hours in the science libraries of the University of Iowa and Yale University, obtaining copies of detailed scientific research covering the topics in this book. In addition I have researched over 200 books on various aspects of astronomy and have collected around 10,000 pages of related information from the Internet, more than enough research for several doctoral degrees. I have been actively researching this subject for over 60 years, and published my first book, The Deceptive Universe, in 1982.

Being outside the astronomical community is actually a good thing. My mind is always free to wander down pathways that are not allowed to those in the field. There has been no pressure to get my name in lights (publish or perish), and there has been no one to enforce their point of view on me. I have been free to find my own answers to the puzzles of the universe, rather than accept what others tell me.

And there are big puzzles in the universe. There are many things that today’s astronomers tell us that either just do not make sense, or are outright wrong. You’ll come to some of these in later chapters.

This book is my attempt to explain what we observe about the universe in a way that is much simpler and common sense than what we have been led to believe.

Introduction

"Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show

But wonder on, till truth make all things plain."

Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In most physical sciences, something either is, or it isn’t. A chemist can work in his laboratory to concoct a new compound, and others can then duplicate this physical object if provided the proper directions. It exists, and no amount of discussion or dissidence will make it go away. A geologist can find a new type of rock, and the physical evidence is there for all to see. An archeologist can bring back the bones as proof of a big discovery. Life is simple. Dissension is rare.

Not so in astronomy and astrophysics. Astronomers sift through decades of old observations and a dizzying flow of new information, trying to fit together the myriad pieces of the puzzle that will someday explain the universe and all that it holds. But the universe is not something you can touch. Physical evidence is inferential at best, and each new piece of information must find its place in the puzzle that is our understanding of the universe.

Over the years, some significant landmark discoveries have been made in the field of astronomy. And each has had to be dealt with. So, decisions have been made, and astronomy ever after follows the branch defined by the decision. The astronomy we have today is dependent on the philosophical branches that have been made at crucial points in the past. A different astronomy would exist if a different branch had been made.

One of the most significant landmark discoveries since Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity has been the discovery by Edwin Hubble of the distance/redshift relationship for galaxies. Hubble determined that there was a relationship between distance to faint galaxies and the shift of their light spectrum toward the red portion of the spectrum, called redshift. And while there are several possible explanations for this redshift, astronomers quickly settled on one explanation—the Doppler effect. This is the major branching point for astronomy in the 20th century. Virtually every nook and cranny of the astronomy we know today stems from a decision made in the 1920’s—that one assumption made to explain the redshift of distant galaxies. This has resulted in the concepts of an expanding universe and the Big Bang, where the universe started with a primordial explosion!

In this book we take a different branch-point from Hubble’s discovery. We provide an alternate cause for the Hubble relationship which does not require an expanding universe, nor a Big Bang.

Along the way we take a new look at many of the other theories prevalent in the field of astronomy, and find most of them suspect. We will also play with gravity, and find that some new ideas about it may solve many of the riddles of the universe. Throughout the following pages we will provide new explanations for much of the outdated dogma currently accepted by most astronomers.

Section I

The Expanding Universe and the Big Bang

In this first section, we will attempt to show that that the two mainstays of the field of astronomy for the last 70 years are wrong. Specifically we intend to show:

The universe is not expanding!

There never was a Big Bang!

Return to Top

Chapter 1

Redshifted Galaxies - the Dawn of Modern Astronomy

Redshift - The Measuring Stick of the Universe

Throughout this book, and in fact, throughout the field of astronomy, the term redshift will be found repeatedly, so it will be useful to have a brief tutorial on just what redshift is, and what it means.

Ordinary light, such as we might see from a light bulb or the sun, is actually a mixture of light from various elements which make up the source. Each of these elements has a unique signature that can be used to identify it.

Suppose a pure element such as nitrogen is made to burn so that it produces visible light. If this light is passed through a prism and onto a white surface, a variety of bands of dark lines will be observed, as illustrated in figure 1-1. These various lines relate to different excitation states of electrons, and are a unique signature for nitrogen. A similar, but also unique, set of lines, is found for every basic element. The prism is the simplest form of spectrum analyzer. Astronomers use much more sophisticated systems to analyze light from stars and galaxies, but the effect is the same. They are looking for the unique signatures of elements in the light they observe.

Figure 1-1 Light passing through a prism disperses differently depending on the wavelength of light.

Astronomers use spectrum analyzers to study the spectrum of stars. By making a photograph of the series of spectral lines from the light from a star, they can observe the signatures of the various elements present in the light, and determine the constitution of the star, in terms of what percent is hydrogen, helium, iron, etc. The spectrum of a star is the equivalent of a MRI of a human body—it tells all. Figure 1-2 illustrates the spectrum of the element nitrogen. The series of lines are unique for nitrogen, and allows astronomers to identify the presence of nitrogen in any light source.

Figure 1-2 Spectrographic image of spectral lines of the element nitrogen.

Figure 1-3 Graphic representation of the spectrograph of a quasar, illustrating redshift. The peak intensities at various wavelengths are caused by different excitation states of the element Hydrogen. The horizontal arrows at the top of the chart show how the peak of each unique spectral element is shifted to the right from its normal position on a spectrograph. This shift, which depends on wavelength, is the redshift of the light source.

When astronomers study the spectrum of nearby stars, they find that the spectrum of some stars tend to stretch toward the red. That is, on a photographic plate of the spectrum, all the lines are shifted toward the red part of the spectrum, with the larger the wavelength, the greater the shift. This is called a redshift, and occurs because the star is moving away from the earth. The Doppler effect causes the shift, which is equivalent to the shift in frequency of sound you hear when a sound is approaching or receding.

In other nearby stars, the spectrum is observed to shift toward the blue end of the spectrum. This is called a blueshift, and occurs because the star is approaching the earth. Thus nearby stars are observed to have either redshifts or blueshifts, depending on whether they are approaching the earth or receding from us (of course, some stars have no redshift, meaning they are neither approaching the earth nor receding from it). Because redshifts and blueshifts are observed so often in nearby stars, astronomers have a predisposition to interpret spectral shifts in terms of velocities of approach or recession.

All distant objects such as galaxies are observed to have shifts in their spectrum, and all these shifts are toward the red. If these redshifts were due to the Doppler effect, then all distant objects would seem to be receding from earth. There are two distinct ranges of redshifts. Ordinary-looking galaxies have fairly low redshifts. Other unusual objects, mostly termed ‘quasars’, have much larger redshifts. Currently, astronomers attribute these redshifts to the Doppler effect. But you shall soon find that there is an entirely different explanation for these spectral shifts—one that does not require the velocity-related Doppler effect.

In this book we will distinguish between low-redshift galaxies and high-redshift quasars. We will also provide separate explanations for the low redshifts and high redshifts. Neither explanation involves the Doppler effect.

Sir Ed Started it All!

In 1926, Sir Edwin Hubble published a paper in which he described a relationship between the brightness of distant galaxies and the shift in the spectrum of their light toward the red—the redshift. The less bright a galaxy was, taken by Hubble as an indication of its distance, the larger the redshift measured from its light. The relationship appeared to be linear—that is, redshift appeared to be directly related with distance, so that the distance to any galaxy could be found by simply determining the redshift of its light. This distance/redshift relationship (see figure 1-4), is now known as Hubble’s law, and is the very foundation of astronomy for the last seventy years.

Figure 1-4 Hubble’s Law – Showing the relationship between redshift and distance. A parsec is 3.26 light years. The numbers on the left represent the velocity of recession, assuming that the redshift is due the Doppler effect. A velocity of 10,000 Km/sec is equal to a redshift of 0.033.

In the field of astronomy, only three phenomena are known which could cause such a redshift. The first is called the gravitational redshift, first predicted by Einstein in his general theory of relativity. It is a redshift of the spectrum of light escaping from a massive object, caused by the gravitational attraction of the object. The effect of gravity on light has been measured both here on earth, and on light emitted by the sun, and found to be in agreement with Einstein’s theory. It is a very small effect for the sun and galaxies, and has not been considered a candidate cause of the observed redshift of distant galaxies. We shall, however, return to this effect in a later chapter.

A second possible cause of redshift is the tired light effect. This assumes that light somehow interacts with matter as it passes through the billions of miles from a distant galaxy to earth, gradually losing energy. A specific mechanism that would make this work has never been found. Much more on this subject follows.

The third known cause of redshift is the Doppler effect described above, which has been observed for nearby stars.

The Redshift of Distant Galaxies

The shift of light from distant galaxies is always red, and significantly higher than that observed for nearby stars. The redshift increases as the distance to the galaxies increases, as indicated by decreasing brightness.

Since the Doppler effect is the only known effect, until now, which appears to explain redshift, it has been nearly universally accepted as the cause of the redshift. This then implies that distant galaxies are receding from our solar system, at very large velocities, in all directions. To fit with Hubble’s observations, it is also necessary that the further away these galaxies are, the faster they are receding from us. From this has sprung the concept of an expanding universe, where all the distant galaxies are fleeing from us in all directions, with ever-larger velocities as their distance increases.

And what causes this galactic recession? Most astronomers believe that if time were put in reverse, there must have been a beginning to the universe—a massive explosion, or the Big Bang, which started it all off and sent galaxies flying off in all directions, some 10 to 20 billion or so years ago. Much of the theoretical work that has been done in astronomy and astrophysics over the last ⁵0 years has concentrated on this theory. At first the theory of the Big Bang seemed simple, and was widely accepted. But as astronomers have learned more and more about the universe, numerous problems with this theory have arisen. Ever resourceful, astronomers have bravely risen to each challenge of the Big Bang theory by adding new features and parameters until the current theory is like a house of cards—various ideas and theories stacked together into a precarious and unstable concept of the creation of the universe. It is time for this house of cards to fall!

Considering Non-Doppler Causes for the Galactic Redshift

While the Doppler effect could cause the observed redshifts, there have always been problems with the concept of an expanding universe. One of the biggest problems was the discovery of quasars, which have extremely high redshifts, and thus are presumably extremely distant. And yet quasars look like faint blue stars when viewed through a telescope or on photographic plates. If these objects are at the distances measured by Hubble’s Law they would have.unbelievable energy output, and would seem to be flying away from us at velocities very near the speed of light. And yet many have proper motion, suggesting that they are nearby We will discuss quasars in more detail later. For now note that the only reason quasars are considered to be so far away is that there is no other current explanation for their extremely high redshifts.

Many astronomers would be happier if there were a non-Doppler explanation for redshift. In his book Principles of cosmology and gravitation, Michael Berry writes:

"The second possible interpretation is the tired light effect: light travelling over vast distances would lose energy and therefore redden. The energy loss could not arise by the inelastic scattering of photons by the particles of some intergalactic medium, because (a) such scattering would produce a distribution of energy loss, and not a single redshift observed, and (b) inelastic scattering would deflect the photons, thus blurring out the images of distant galaxies, and this is not observed. Therefore the tired light effect is sometimes postulated as a new property of electromagnetic radiation. This would certainly explain the redshift without motion of the galaxies, but there is a deep philosophical objection to explanations of this sort. They are ad hoc hypotheses. This means that they are introduced to account for a particular experimental result, and remain disconnected from the rest of physical knowledge. Such explanations are unsatisfactory because they are not open to experimental disproof: they are not falsifiable. It is always possible to ‘explain’ any experiment by postulating a new effect, but the difficulty (and the challenge) in science is to unify extensive bodies of knowledge. This is exactly what the Doppler explanation does: changes in frequency resulting from relative motion of source and observer